58 - The Games Autocrats Play
Autocrats the world over privilege their personal interests over the public interest, and insist, like Putin, on thwarting the achievement of worthy global objectives in order to pander to their own senses of self-importance and assumed grandiosity, and to satisfy inflated ego needs. Here are a few examples, with more to come in subsequent posts.
NATO’s Enlargement
U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that it will happen, that Finland and Sweden will soon become the twenty-ninth and thirtieth members of the North American Alliance Organization. He is confident that Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan’s demand that the Nordic neighbors designate the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as a terrorist operation and extradite any of its members (perhaps three dozen?) who are refugees there can be assuaged or otherwise handled. NATO has a rule of unanimity, just like the European Union.
Erdogan is inhibiting, if not preventing, the Swedes and Finn’s from joining the official anti-Putin ranks possibly 1) because he sees slowing their accession to NATO a favor to Putin that will be remembered and repaid; 2) because he genuinely thinks he can gain electoral support at home by further threatening Kurdish separatists, even those supposedly in Sweden and Finland; 3) because he wants to throw his weight around and be recognized as someone important; or 4) all of the above, and because he puffs up his personal sense of efficacy by being obstreperous.
Turkey’s security forces are the most numerous in NATO after those of the United States. So Erdogan’s opposition cannot be brushed aside. He has to be cajoled and stroked, probably in time by President Biden, who loathes Erdogan and the despotism and fiscal mayhem that he has personally unleashed on Turkey and its inhabitants. The U. S. has kept Turkey at a distance ever since Erdogan agreed to receive Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries instead of American ones. Erdogan wanted B-35 stealth aircraft, but was refused because of his deal with Putin. Now he seeks F-16 aircraft, so Erdogan may think that slowing the Nordic impulse may gain him American hardware.
Whatever transpires, Putin clearly enjoys the extra knots into which his adversaries are tying themselves.
Hungary Helps Putin, Too
The same goes for Hungary’s autocracy, about which I wrote earlier (#24,”Putin-like Compatriots Elsewhere: II, Hungary and Serbia,” April 6). President Viktor Orban governs his own European country under emergency legislation that he seeks to renew. His is a full-scale despotism, probably even more all encompassing than Turkey’s. He refuses to vote along with the rest of Europe to block Russian petroleum exports into the Union. As a result Europe has had to compromise in a manner that gives Putin more than his invasion and atrocities deserve.
Late Monday night in Brussels the rest of Europe finally forced Hungary’s hand. Its other twenty-six members will now reluctantly let Hungary keep oil arriving from Siberia by dedicated pipeline while phasing out perhaps 90 percent of all other petroleum shipments into the European Union. The pipeline in question extends from Russia through Belarus and Ukraine onwards to Hungary and Slovakia. The latter country is even more dependent on Russian pipeline oil than Hungary (96 percent to 58 percent) but Slovakia has long been on Ukraine’s side and antagonistic to Putin. Not so, Hungary.
Even though Germany is more vulnerable than Hungary, Europe has now agreed to bar all Russian oil and oil products from entering its domain. When the screws are eventually tightened on Russian shipments by sea and perhaps through other pipelines, Russia will lose $23 billion a month, thus helping to cripple its war effort. Doing so may take some months, and there is a Russian-owned refinery in Germany that produces large amounts of fuel for the local market, but Europe appears determined to do everything in its power (despite Orban’s opposition) to deprive Russia of the foreign exchange earnings that power its bombing of vulnerable cities and civilians in the Donbas region.
When Europe manages soon to cut oil imports from Russia, Putin will still gain cash from Hungary. Orban, inside Europe, can continue to curry favor from his preferred autocrat.
The Rajapaksa Saga
In the once enchanted island state of Sri Lanka, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa refuses to resign despite the clear end of the authoritarian reign of Rajapaksas (brothers and nephews) that began in 2004 and is now sullied by revelations of extravagant spending on their birth town, on hare-brained projects, and on themselves. Last week Sri Lanka had few foodstuffs and no gas or diesel for autos. Only emergency credits from India keep Sri Lanka from collapsing, although innumerable thousands are starving. (For an earlier article in this newsletter, see #40, “Putin-like Compatriots, VI: The Rapacious Rajapaksas,” April 29.)
President Rajapaksa, in a desperate maneuver, last week summoned Ranil Wickremesinghe, an experienced local political leader and long-time (opposition) prime minister, to the rescue. He has been Sri Lanka’s prime minister five times before, has a deserved reputation for integrity and accountability, and represents political business as it should be run in normal times. (I knew him years ago when he visited MIT). He is also distinctly Sinhalese, a trusted representative of Sri Lanka’s majority.
But as skilled as Wickremesinghe may be, how can he pursue the president and his family’s ill-gotten gains? The siphoning off and skimming of Sri Lankan resources, together with Rajapaksa’s mistaken reduction of taxes (thereby undercutting social payments), banning chemical fertilizers from abroad (thus abruptly crippling agricultural productivity), and borrowing heavily from China are policy decisions that can be reversed and righted, if not rapidly. But uncovering and recovering the vast sums that the Rajapaksa clan has lifted from the nation may take years to accomplish and demand the kinds of authority that Wickremesinghe hardly yet possesses. If the prime minister can compel the president to leave office, Sri Lankans will be better off and may have an opportunity to retrieve some of the stolen proceeds.